Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings, has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons. In the United States and most countries, corporations have a right to enter into contracts with other parties and to sue or be sued in court in the same way as natural persons or unincorporated associations of persons. In a U.S. historical context, the phrase 'Corporate Personhood' refers to the ongoing legal debate over the extent to which rights traditionally associated with natural persons should also be afforded to corporations. A headnote issued by the Court Reporter in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. claimed to state the sense of the Court regarding the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as it applies to corporations, without the Court having actually made a decision or issued a written opinion on that point. This was the first time that the Supreme Court was reported to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations as well as to natural persons, although numerous other cases, since Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1819, had recognized that corporations were entitled to some of the protections of the Constitution. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), the Court found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 exempted Hobby Lobby from aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because those aspects placed a substantial burden on the closely held company's owners' exercise of free religion.
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), affirmed on rehearing, 158 U.S. 601 (1895), with a ruling of 5–4, was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the unapportioned income taxes on interest, dividends and rents imposed by the Income Tax Act of 1894 were, in effect, direct taxes, and were unconstitutional because they violated the provision that direct taxes be apportioned. The decision was superseded in 1913 by the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A separate holding regarding the taxation of interest income on certain bonds was overruled by the Supreme Court in 1988 in the case of South Carolina v. Baker.
Horace Gray was an American jurist who served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and then on the United States Supreme Court, where he frequently interpreted the Constitution in ways that increased the powers of Congress. Noted for possessing a sharp mind and an enthusiasm for legal research, he was also a staunch supporter of the authority of precedent throughout his career.
The Equal Protection Clause is a clause within the text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State [...] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws".
Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189 (1920), was a tax case before the United States Supreme Court that is notable for the following holdings:
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 435 U.S. 519 (1978), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that a court cannot impose rulemaking procedures on a federal government agency. The federal Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 and an agency's statutory mandate from Congress establish the maximum requirements for an agency's rulemaking process. An agency may grant additional procedural rights in the regulatory process. However, a reviewing court cannot "impose upon the agency its own notion of which procedures are 'best' or most likely to further some vague, undefined public good" ; to do so would exceed the limits of judicial review of agency action.
The Yale Law Journal is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students at Yale Law School. The journal is one of the most cited legal publications in the nation and usually generates the highest number of citations per published article.
Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465 (1935), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court concerned with U.S. income tax law. The case is cited as part of the basis for two legal doctrines: the business purpose doctrine and the doctrine of substance over form. The business purpose doctrine is essentially that if a transaction has no substantial business purpose other than the avoidance or reduction of Federal tax, the tax law will not regard the transaction. The doctrine of substance over form is essentially that for Federal tax purposes, a taxpayer is bound by the economic substance of a transaction if the economic substance varies from its legal form.
United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court decision. It determined that the Bail Reform Act of 1984, which permitted the federal courts to detain an arrestee prior to trial if the government could prove that the individual was potentially dangerous to other people in the community, was constitutional. It violated neither the US Constitution's Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment nor its Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment.
Commissioner v. Wilcox, 327 U.S. 404 (1946), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.
United States v. Kirby Lumber Co., 284 U.S. 1 (1931), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that when a corporation settles its debts for less than the face amount, a taxable gain has occurred.
Zechariah Chafee, Jr., was an American professor of law, judicial philosopher and civil rights advocate. Defending freedom of speech, he was described by Senator Joseph McCarthy as "dangerous" to America. Legal scholar Richard Primus called Chafee "possibly the most important First Amendment scholar of the first half of the twentieth century."
North American Oil Consolidated v. Burnet, 286 U.S. 417 (1932), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that established the claim of right doctrine.
Springer v. United States, 102 U.S. 586 (1881), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the Federal income tax imposed under the Revenue Act of 1864.
Arrowsmith v. Commissioner, 344 U.S. 6 (1952), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding taxation. The case involves taxpayers who liquidated a corporation in 1937. The taxpayers (properly) reported the income from the liquidation as long-term capital gains, thus obtaining a preferential tax rate. Subsequent to the liquidation in 1944, the taxpayers were required to pay a judgment arising from the affairs of the liquidated corporation. The taxpayers classified this payment as an ordinary business loss, which would allow them to take a greater deduction for the loss than would be permitted for a capital loss.
Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that there the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not require, as an invariable rule in every case, that a state appellate court, before it affirms a death sentence, proportionally compare the sentence in the case before it with the penalties imposed in similar cases if requested to do so by the prisoner.
Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of constitutional arguments asserting that the imposition, assessment and collection of the federal income tax violates the United States Constitution. These kinds of arguments, though related to, are distinguished from statutory and administrative arguments, which presuppose the constitutionality of the income tax, as well as from general conspiracy arguments, which are based upon the proposition that the three branches of the federal government are involved together in a deliberate, on-going campaign of deception for the purpose of defrauding individuals or entities of their wealth or profits. Although constitutional challenges to U.S. tax laws are frequently directed towards the validity and effect of the Sixteenth Amendment, assertions that the income tax violates various other provisions of the Constitution have been made as well.
Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 U.S. 103 (1916), is a United States Supreme Court case.
A poll tax is a tax levied as a fixed sum on every liable individual. Although often associated with states of the former Confederate States of America Confederacy, poll taxes were also in place in some northern and western states, including California, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. Poll taxes had been a major source of government funding among the colonies which formed the United States. Poll taxes made up from one-third to one-half of the tax revenue of colonial Massachusetts. Various privileges of citizenship, including voter registration or issuance of driving licenses and resident hunting and fishing licenses, were conditioned on payment of poll taxes to encourage collection of this tax revenue. Property taxes assumed a larger share of tax revenues as land values rose when population increases encouraged settlement of the American west. Some western states found no need for poll tax requirements; but poll taxes and payment incentives remained in eastern states, and some links to voter registration were modified following the American Civil War until court action following ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964.
